WHY DO THEY HATE HILLARY?

Hillary Clinton has convincingly won the Democratic nomination making history as the first woman Presidential candidate. Juxtaposed to her dignified and Presidential victory speech and campaign the violent and visceral reaction to Hillary Clinton continues apace. The anger towards her and her husband never ceases to amaze. Not just sharp criticism but vitriolic and full go bile - She is “crooked”, “she is evil”, “she is inauthentic and you cannot connect or relate to her”, and on and on. She is too liberal. She is the conservative establishment. She is as hard as nails.  At kindest she is just not trusted. A key point in all this venom is that it has existed from the moment Hillary specifically and the Clintons generally hit the public scene forty years ago. 

Before continuing there is no doubt that she has a certain arrogance coupled with an ambition that jars but it does it merit this invective?  

It was all summed up by Lindsay Graham the outspoken Republican Senator who as a result of Trump’s ongoing racism sadly wailed, “There will come a time when love of country will trump hatred of Hillary”. Not disagreement with Hillary, or the destructive agenda of Hillary but rather it is hatred that they would have to overcome in order to be able to love the country. Why?

IN THE BEGINNING

One of the problems is that Hillary has been around forever. In politics that is no advantage as there is more record to pick apart. In addition politicians have to compromise to get anything done which adds an aura of insincerity. 

So let the record be exposed from the word go.

The naysayers argue that from the word go she has been a conniving shrew with and eye to the main chance. (Not an ambitious male - but an overbearing pushy female). Well if one reads her biographies, (the best of which Jay H. Ell believes is Carl Bernstein’s “A Woman in Charge”), that doesn’t quite tally. Her precollege experience where she was socially conscious, religiously conservative and a Goldwater supporter was of a serious young lady far beyond her years growing up in a restrictive environment with a dominating controlling father and a long suffering nurturing wise mother.  

At Wesley College she became Head Student and incidentally was the leader of the student branch of the Republican Party. She hit the national scene with a well received, reasoned and adult exposition of her views on the violent issues of the tumultuous seventh decade of the twentieth century - Vietnam, Civil Rights  and Assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. This exposition was delivered, while still very much a Republican, on the occasion when she was given the honor of responding to her commencement speaker, Senator Brooke the Republican, African American Senator. Her heartfelt mature and responsible intervention received national attention. The magazine, Life, featured the oration together with a photo and she was hailed as having articulated the concerns of the youth at the time. So she entered Yale as a celebrity. Her challenge then as it is to day, the pragmatic way to achieve her socially conscious principles.  Her leadership qualities were recognized at Yale where her reputation was further enhanced.  

ALONG CAME BILL

The conventional wisdom is that she latched onto Bill Clinton in order to further her burning ambition. Nothing could be further from the truth. When Bill met her she was the national figure not him. In fact her and Bill’s minds connected and they were ad idem in terms of changing society for the better. Every report would indicate that they were head over heels in love and inseparable. As a consequence she gave up her a very promising career in Washington, against the advice of well meaning mentors, to go to the Arkansas sticks to be with Bill.

From the word go her and Bill were partners and it was her advise, counsel and approval that he most wanted. This continues to this day.

Surely so far so good?

ARKANSAS

She went in boots and all and again, to the chagrin of many, as her husband's right hand man. She carved a large niche in community service with rural medical clinics and childhood education. She was the main breadwinner in the household working as a lawyer. She struggled to have children, Chelsea being the only progeny. After Bill’s 10 years in public service he ran for the Presidency and it was she that made it possible running cover for him in his then exposed affair with Gennifer Flowers. His roving eye had been a constant source of friction between the two of them and she had thought of divorce often. However, besides the bond the two of them she had been brought up by her abused mother to believe that divorce was to be avoided like the plague. 

In the Flowers scandal she claimed that they had difficulties in their marriage that they had worked through. This was their business not the nation’s. In early 1990’s this attitude was more revered than scoffed at - “Stand by your man”, still was pretty conventional social currency.

Again it is obvious that there was no evidence of “crookedness” as yet - only anger at her intrusiveness in her husband’s affaris. All this begs the question why the hate which was to manifest to the point of accusing her of murder!

THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY

So it was onto Pennsylvania Avenue where her closeness to her husband as his chief confidant was an open secret. David Gergen, that celebrated advisor to four Presidents including Clinton, from close up confirmed that in the WhiteHouse she and Bill Clinton had a unique relationship. There convention had been flouted when the first lady was given an office in the West Wing. Obviously anger manifested at this uppity wife who did not know her place was in the East Wing arranging social parties and to quote her “choosing the china”. 

Hillary was given the job of initiating a new health care policy. It was a humongous task and at that stage she had no idea of how powerful interest groups were in Washington. Although the plan, more than any other, took into account into all aspects of health care including what type of doctor was needed, it floundered on the rocks of powerful vested interests and became politically untenable. 

It did not take long for the accusations of crookedness and corruption to surface and rise to a crescendo. She and her husband were accused of corruption in what became known as the Whitewater scandal and everything and anything - from Travelgate to Filegate to allegedly murdering a legal assistant, Vince Forster it went on and on. President Clinton thought he would calm the seas and appointed a special prosecutor. This whole episode, ironically, gave her a clean bill of fiscal and political health. Special prosecutor Kenneth Starr had spent eighty million dollars to get the dirt on both Hillary and Bill and all he had come up with was ten gory sexual encounters between the President and Monica Lewinsky. (Blog: Hit Man Starr Bites the Dust).

AND THEN THERE WAS MONICA

Her next glare under the intense spotlight was in the Lewinsky scandal. Although publicly furious with her husband she also publicly stuck by him. Again the argument that she did it for personal political gain made no sense. She was already a figure in her own right for better or worse. The public sympathy was mostly with her and would have remained with her if she had called it quits. So “crooked” Hillary had done nothing wrong politically or fiscally in Arkansas or the WhiteHouse and had Kenneth Starr’s highly costly investigation to prove it.

So what is there to actually hate or even distrust? Perhaps dislike and anger at her modus operandi amongst civil servants, members of administration and WhiteHouse staff. If she had been a trusted ally, or even a brother like Bobby Kennedy, that Clinton had relied on all his political life and brought into the WhiteHouse, there would have been the usual murmurings as all jockeyed for power and closeness to the President, but his wife in that position was apparently beyond the pale?

So it was onto the Senate

THE SENATE

The Senate saw her all on her own, honing her political skills and being a team player. She was the first First Lady to occupy a seat in the Senate. But in her freshman years she painstakingly paid her dues following Senate custom and behaving appropriately in deference to tradition. She worked like a trojan and become New York’s own when she was upfront in the efforts to rebuild it fiscally and emotionally after 9/11. Hillary saw to it that she was the most well informed and hardworking member in the Senate. She deliberately retained a low profile after years being a public lightning rod. She worked both sides of the aisle and gained the respect of all including  the keeper and doyen of the Senate’s tradition, Robert Byrd. 

It was here, however, that she made her “mistake” backing, with nearly everyone else in the world, the decision to go to war with Sadam. However, her most vocal critics in this arena were the Democrats in Presidential Primaries through first Barak and then Bernie. But they are not the ones who hate and distrust her.

After eight years she made her first run at the Presidency to a renewed hail of hate and abuse. For practical purposes nothing new had occurred to warrant this after her clean bill of health from Kenneth Starr and her stellar Senate term but that counted for nothing.

PRESIDENCY ONE

So Hillary was going for the highest spot in the land and it seemed all hers for the taking. However, she was about to bump a phenom - a gifted, likable and witty politician who was the country’s greatest orator since Martin Luther King. His rise was meteoric and he promised change and his challenge hit her from left field. In retrospect the outcome was not all that surprising. Barack Obama had powerful backers from the Establishment and the influential Illinois patricians from the word go. He did not have the baggage of a long political career and he grabbed the nomination and then the Presidency. 

In spite of the fact that Hillary had come desperately close to winning, far closer than Bernie, (someone should play him the tapes), she acted with dignity and magnanimity conceding and throwing her full weight behind Obama. 

Again where was the evidence of a pattern of behavior that warranted hate and distrust?

SECRETARY OF STATE - BHENGAZI AND THE E MAILS

As Secretary of State it was acknowledged that she worked harder than any other before her. Henry Kissinger praised her work and commitment. For periods this was recognized and there were even times that her public approval rates were up there. Then came two episodes which her naysayers  have argued was ongoing evidence of her life long perfidy - Benghazi and her e mails.

What Benghazi boils down to is the argument that she lied about what precipitated the attacks on the Embassy. She maintains that the initial intelligence was that it was a riot as a result of a blasphemous video - the conventional supposition incidentally at the time by the pundits. “They” maintain she knew from the get - go, what it subsequently turned out to be, the work of terrorists. Five Republican inspired congressional investigations at a cost of close on $7 million has produced no evidence of wrongdoing. If the Republicans believe it would be too their advantage they would drag her back for another hearing but after a fruitless eleven hours of grueling cross examination, which was considered a major public relations disaster, they are unlikely to do so. It was already conceded that the purpose of all of this, by the Republican House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, was to bring down her poll numbers!

So we now come to the e mail “disaster”. Here she correctly confesses that she should have not have used her private e mail instrument and a private server in the Secretary of State’s Office. Now despite a report from that Department that she was remiss in doing so and never sought permission both her predecessors also did not use Government equipment for their e mails. Former Secretary of State, Colin Powell has publicly defended Clinton and his Chief of Staff has maintained that the criticism is political. So obviously this is not an earth shattering event. The bohaai has resulted in an investigation by the FBI using resources and time hither too unheard off. Their conclusion after months of investigation  - no legal malfeasance. Nobody asks why  Powell and Rice wern't investigated for the same lapse, rather they implicitly argue that the FBI Director is a crook as Hillary rigged the system.

So for the moment these two latest “scandals”, which like all Clinton allegations were investigated up the ying yang, have produced zilch.

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN TWO

Now The Donald his goodself is continuing in the vein of Hillary The Terrible and refers to her as crooked Hillary and is rehashing all the old smears. He has replayed the Starr report blaming Bill’s behavior on Hillary and suggesting that it is still an open question whether Hillary murdered Vince Foster or not. He has lied that he didn’t support the Iraq war and that she did. History will decide, what the demographics now point to, that with Trump she may have caught a break. However, the narrative that she is a weak crooked candidate has still stuck and the media as well as the pundits are almost ad idem that the choice boils down to the lesser of two evils - bad bad Hillary Rodham and off the wall Trump.

WHY?

All this still begs the question as to why. Admittedly she rarely displays emotion but then neither did Romney or most candidates for that matter. She is not likable. But who is? Trump? So what is so different? Jay H. Ell believes much of this attitude is that both consciously and unconsciously a portion of the American electorate, who regard America as the yang powerhouse of the world, don’t want a woman Commander in Chief. Some of the social media criticism is downright sexist. America’s failure to elect a female leader stands out like a sore thumb in a world where this has being on for over sixty years. Jay H. Ell is quite sure that Elizabeth Cady Stanton who organized the first convention for women suffrage in Seneca Falls New York in 1842 did not believe it would take this long to see a woman in the WhiteHouse!